Cap'n Refsmmat

Forced sterilization can't be called a "more natural state of living" either. Genetic diseases are quite natural.

I believe that the problem with that myth is that just because they're cleaner doesn't mean they don't have harmful bacteria in them. They just have less.

I believe the biggest question we need to answer here is, "is the immorality of forcibly sterilizing people outweighed by the benefits it will bring several generations on?" The same could be said if you chopped birthrates. Social security would collapse, old people would die, workforce would shrink, etc.

Helix, I believe the point of eugenics is to eliminate those disorders entirely, not just help them live through it. And eliminating them entirely requires sterilization of those who suffer from them. (Though I'm not quite sure if this is really ethical... will the future generations get enough benefits out of it to outweigh the ethical problems? Hard to say... they would have social security problems...)

Is this supposed to be a lecture or a question? This is a discussion forum, after all.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801878675/104-2272470-8510305?v=glance&n=283155 I'd point out that many magicians can do similar things.

Moderators ought to move those threads into the news forum when they see them. You can just use the Report This Post button if really necessary.

1. Fuel cells require fossil fuels to create the hydrogen, 2. Fusion is a long way off, and apparently you haven't read the news: they're trying.

I think there ought to be Science News and World News sections. That would leave the Politics forum for actual discussion of political issues, with the world news forum for things like natural disasters and such. And 5614, if you'd actually like to be a part of the news team, send me a PM. It's only herpguy and me at the moment, so we need a few more to keep up the flow to a few articles per day (and have enough people that we can actually edit articles and such).

The problem is, there aren't very many staff members to choose from. And, do I count as staff? I'm the news team supervisor, but that's kind of a community thing... hrm.

NASA has confirmed that it has canceled the Dawn mission to study two of the largest known asteroids in the solar system. The mission had been in development for four years, and was already 20% over budget, with major technical problems yet to be solved. This comes as a major setback to scientists, as NASA has no other asteroid-studying missions planned (though one proposal is due on April 5th). However, NASA hopes to salvage parts out of the half-completed spacecraft for other missions, so it is not a total waste. Scientists, however, will have to wait even longer to get their asteroid mission. http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn8805

I believe this is called "truthiness." truthiness, n: the quality by which a person purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or to what the person might conclude from intellectual examination.

There's one very simple way: if photons had mass, they could not reach the speed of light, according to relativity.

He's assuming that cells just popped up. Most likely they started as an incredibly simple life-forum, not as a full-blown eukaryotic cell.

Hyperventilating is free.

The first ISP is Proxad in France, abuse email address abuse@proxad.net The second address is unspecified and could have been allocated to anybody. http://www.ripe.net/whois

A new red spot has begun to grow on Jupiter. This new storm, “Oval BA,” also known as “Red Jr.” first appeared in the year 2000, and has recently started to change colors. In November, Oval BA was white. Slowly, the storm turned brown in December, and in the last few weeks the storm has become red. Oval BA is about half the size of the Great Red Spot, and almost the exact same color. Nobody knows exactly why the spot is red, but a popular theory is that the storm dredges material from deep beneath the cloud tops to high altitudes, where a chemical reaction between ultraviolet radiation and the material occurs. If this theory is correct, Oval BA is most likely intensifying. The deepening red may be a sign that the storm is lifting material higher than before. “Some of Jupiter’s white ovals have appeared slightly reddish before, for example in late 1999, but not often and not for long. It will indeed be interesting to see if Oval BA becomes permanently red,” says John Rogers, author of the book “Jupiter: The Giant Planet.” http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060303_jupiter_spot.html

It would be nice if you took the time to respond to others' posts.

a) there are very easy ways that we can use to determine if you're SmallIsPower (just wait for a moderator to pop in), b) this has been discussed before: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18608

Excuse me while I get out my Buzzword Bingo cards.

Cap'n Refsmmat is the "ideal flight controller" as described by Gene Kranz, and I registered just as I finished reading his book. So it came naturally. The avatar was completely random.

There are deep-sea layers (actually just differences in water temperature) in water that can channel sound quite clearly, so any object that makes sound underneath one of those layers can be heard for miles around. The layers reflect sound, so they can be used to hide ("hiding under the layer" is a technique submariners can use to hide from passive sonar), but they also channel sound very well. So I don't think it's physical seperation that lead them to believe that it was very large. Perhaps the sheer volume. ps: the sonar system is called SOSUS, or SOund SUrveilance System.

You'll find that it's very hard to capture lightning. First of all, a lightning bolt can hit 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, so you'd have to make a very durable battery. Lightning is also static electricity, not AC or DC as in your average battery or power outlet, so you'd have to figure out how to convert it. If you want to make a rod attract lightning, it's fairly simple: make it positively charged.

In theory, the atmospheric pressure above the paper would be a tiny bit less, simply because it's farther up (as altitude increases, pressure decreases). But that's the opposite of what would be necessary, so you're definitely on the right track.